Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

McCready leaves behind the sour dying
of whisky laughter, draping his long shadow
beyond empty swings in a park where once city
urchins had halloweened, each whitened mask
pitting the dark, their cries of no account
against the sudden snow's encroaching stain.

The snow already bears the yellow stain
a drunk unleashed, his mumble slowly dying
on the one name banked in his love account.
His mother’s dead. He hunkers into shadow,
avoids the puckered lips as her death mask
assumes the easy virtue of this city.

Even sparse snow will paralyse this city
McCready stalks. Its people will sustain
an innocence despite the gargoyle’s mask
where fond relatives abandon the dying
who drown beneath its baptismal shadow.
Such accidents are held of no account

for they are denied language to account
loss though a thousand tongues pervade a city
whose grids are down, whose pylons overshadow
arid orchards, whose summer fruits won’t stain
the fingers of the old or children dying
to taste sweetness. Empty words cannot mask

their faint cries. Silken phrases cannot mask
untended corpses. We can only count
small hypocrisies we accord the dying.
McCready knows sacrament in this city
is vomit not oil, the usual stain
of the last rite. It splashes the long shadow

the drunk recognises - his spirit shadow.
McCready bends, his grin a lipless mask.
Compassionate, he removes the sick stain
from the drunk, then his coat. Cold will account
for this unmourned death where only the city
holds the fading warmth of the dead or dying.

This is Death’s city: he removes his mask
knowing it’s of no account what will stain
the last brief touch the dying feel: snow, shadow.